


Addictions

by Zippit



Category: 24
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-10
Updated: 2007-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Addictions are what make Jack Bauer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Addictions

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** [TamingtheMuse](http://tamingthemuse.livejournal.com) #29 - Et tu, Brute?

Betrayal is watching your best friend, sometimes enemy, get hitched to the one person who ends those casual, unspoken encounters.

It's the low twist of fire burning in your gut as you smile and agree to be his best man.

It's the sight of her looking so beautiful and radiant and everything Tony deserves gliding down the aisle toward you.

Betrayal is everything and nothing related to losing him.

Betrayal is everything your mind whispers in the dead of night, driving fears and longing into the dim darkness of death and pain. It's waking without his presence by your side, soothing your fears and bringing you back to the world of the living. Gentle touches and soft words missing from the fabric of your life, things that once were common place.

It's missing everything about him and hating yourself for it. It's the way he laughs at work, the way shared glances between them could mean so much more and you'll never know. It's in the way you can sometimes read what he means through the shades of what they were to you. They're different with her. Like everything else.

She's your opposite yet your complement. Dark haired, competent; she is strength in your weakness while you are strength in hers. She is the one who caught the blaze of fire and turned it back onto you. She is the one that made your job worth doing once more, not because you wanted her, no, because you knew you were good once more. Because you were proven in the blazes of hell's baptism. You were still good, you were still whole.

You saw the attraction, saw it build. You watched it grow into the inferno that once had dominated your life too. You tried to pretend it wasn't there, tried to pretend Tony coming to you in the dark of night was enough. You tried and tried and you guess you succeeded if he couldn't tell you wanted...

Wanted nothing that he could offer you, nothing you could offer him. You live your lives, inches away from the brink, inches away from death. It's no surprise he would want normal instead of the battle of secrecy and self-regret and prosecution.

You watch and yearn and then you disappear. You're taught once more what it is to feel that brand of pleasure, to feel that type of torment. You return the same yet not. You're addicted to heroin; you let them believe what they want to believe and not let them see the deeper hollow carving you from the inside. Heroin, it dulls the addiction you had, the addiction you rediscovered and only one person could truly fill to satisfaction.

Addiction is the driving force in your life. It tended your wounds and eased your sorrows. But don't forget it contributed to them also. The pursuit of duty lead to your wife's death; the pursuit of truth lead to the distance between you and Tony; the pursuit of success lead to heroin and the loss of your life.

The one good thing your addictions gave you was the brief glimmer of happiness. It even gave you the chance to do the only decent thing you've done in your life; you freed Tony from the confines of prison.

Many things fill you, complications of addictions is what best describes you.


End file.
